Lately, as our plight has become clearer and clearer from week to week supporters have been looking for someone to blame for the fact that it’s looking increasingly likely that we’ll be relegated this season.
Vincent Tan’s stock is probably as low, if not lower, than it was at the height of the rebrand controversy and for all that Mehmet Dalman and Ken Choo are probably right when they say one man makes all of the big decisions at Cardiff City these days, that doesn’t excuse them for being poor at their jobs – that’s when they’re actually doing them, it doesn’t seem to happen too often these days.
Yes, the three men at the top have to accept their share of the blame for a reduction of standards throughout the club which, the 17/18 promotion apart, has been going on for a decade and, with the rate of decline getting steeper year by year, there’s no evidence that any of them are learning by their mistakes, quite the opposite in fact.
Just six months ago, the recruitment department, to the extent that we have one, was being praised for what was perceived as a good transfer window, but now it looks anything but that, so, with good reason I’d say, they’re getting their fair share of stick as well.
Then, of course, there’s Omer Riza whose position looks less secure now that he’s been told the manager’s job is his until the end of the season. I’ve been more supportive of Riza than others mainly because I have a degree of sympathy for any manager who has to work for Vincent Tan and, for a short while at least, his team played football that was entertaining. However, we’re getting progressively worse under Riza and the point is being reached where it’s beginning to look as if he is surviving only because sacking him will mean more embarrassment for Mr Tan and his two cohorts.
With players dropping like flies as the injuries mount up, the competence of the medical staff at the club has come into question (there have also been claims that a penny pinching attitude means that we do not have enough of them – the same has been said regarding coaching staff, although it has been added to this week with the appointment of Richard Shaw who worked with Riza at Watford).
Even the Cardiff City Stadium pitch is being blamed now for causing the plethora of injuries we’re seeing, but the only party at the club I’ve not mentioned yet, the players, have escaped pretty lightly. That’s surely going to change though after today’s 3-2 loss at Oxford United in which twenty third in the table entertained twenty second in the table in a game that was billed as being tremendously significant as to what the bottom of the league will look like come the end of the season.
It would be wrong to say the players had escaped Scot free in the blame game – there have been those who have consistently singled them out through the season, but I’d say they were a minority, with most quicker to point the finger at Messrs Tan, Dalman, Choo and/or Riza.
At the end of today’s match though I found myself feeling such annoyance at a nucleus of the more experienced members of the starting line up who, in truth, have been letting the club down for months and are doing little to justify their, no doubt, exorbitant wage packets.
I’m reminded of a line Malky Mackay used to come out with about how the club’s recruitment department, back in the says when we had a functioning one, would not just look into the playing ability of transfer targets, but also their character. How true that was I don’t know, but, from the outside looking in, there seems little evidence that the character of potential new signings has been a consideration in deciding whether to press ahead with their acquisition in the last two or three years.
Some of the players I’m thinking of such as Callum Chambers, Chris Willock, Wilfried Kanga and Anwar El Ghazi arrived this summer, but there’s also the forward who has still not scored a goal at home since he signed in the summer of 2023 who recently sent out a social media post railing against supporters who dared to be critical of him, Yakou Meite.
There are others, including Rubin Colwill (who is proving the malaise doesn’t just exist in players brought into the club) and our pair of Greek internationals lately and Callum Robinson and Perry Ng at times in the past, who help to create an impression that too many of the first team squad think they are better than they are. It feels like there is a combination of naivety and arrogance in their thinking, and maybe that of the current manager in the case of the former, which makes us temperamentally unsuited for the fight we’re facing in the coming months.
Today’s match illustrated what I’m trying to say. I think for two thirds of the game we showed that, technically, we had better players all over the pitch than our opponents, but that’s not enough in a division as competitive as the Championship and that becomes even more true when you’re fighting for your life at the bottom of it.
That said, football at virtually any level is the same – the superior team in terms of skill has to earn the right to display those attributes and this is where we have a major problem.
I’d say we’ve only done that at home against Plymouth and Portsmouth and in some of our drawn away games (eg Coventry and Stoke) where we put in a shift which merited three points.
At the half hour mark of today’s game, I’d say someone who had not seen either team play before would have been tipping us to win with one reservation – for all of the way we were looking sharper on the ball and more coherent than our opponents, apart from a Willock shot deflected on to the crossbar, we were doing absolutely nothing to harm Oxford.
In terms of being in control of the ball, as opposed to struggling to retain possession, this squad is better than those of the past three seasons, but that’s not enough because there’s been little ot no corresponding improvement in creativity – we’re a side that cannot earn that right to play and today, for all of our technical superiority on a one v one basis, it was useless because we had zilch to show for it.
For all of our meaningless popping the ball about, it was Oxford who were showing they had a better understanding of what was needed in the position the two teams found themselves in. It wasn’t so much that they were staying in the game because it never became a case of them having to do that, but they bided their time and four minutes before the interval showed a ruthlessness that we’ve seldom matched all season.
Willock lost the ball carelessly in the middle of the park and then, just as bad, showed little inclination to repair his error as his tracking back was half hearted at best. Przemyslaw Placheta was then sent into a yawning gap down our left and his low cross was turned in from about four yards out by, of course, Mark Harris for his first goal since August.
From the first real opportunity they had, Oxford had made us pay for a mistake in a way we just don’t do and the effect it had on our team was alarming as we crumbled completely in the next twenty minutes.
Willock paid for his sloppiness by being replaced by Callum Robinson at half time and I thought he was one of our better players in a second half showing which bordered on the shameful until some face was saved in the last ten minutes.
So many City heads dropped after that first goal went in. This was the time when some of the experienced performers in the side needed to stand up and be counted, but they were nowhere to be seen and it didn’t take long for Oxford to make it 2-0 as an unmarked Ciaran Brown, of course, headed in a corner with Colwill and Goutas looking culpable.
Four minutes later it was 3-0 as Placheta rocketed in a shot from over twenty five yards. It was a fine goal, but, from a City perspective, the failure to close the scorer down was criminal – about fifteen minutes later, Cameron Brannagan was given all of the time he wanted to get a shot away that was blocked, but he still had enough time to get another effort in from the rebound with still no City player within a couple of yards of him.
This was indicative of just how ragged we’d become as Oxford began to show, or were allowed to show, they could play a bit as well and the opportunities were there for them to have doubled their lead against rattled opponents who were really showing what an uncompetitive lot they were.
Yet, despite this, the events of the last ten minutes saw us being able to say, in all seriousness, that we should have ended up drawing 3-3!
Ronan Kpakio and Cian Ashford had been brought on as subs soon after we’d gone 3-0 down and, despite the former being slated continuously by “expert” summariser Robert Earnshaw, the seventeen year old was an improvement on Andy Rinomhota, who, for the first time, looked like a fish out of water defensively at right wing back. Kpakio, who is already our best attacking right sided full back I’d say, now has an assist to his name as his low, pulled back cross (labelled “poor” by Earnie) was instantly controlled and dispatched by Ashford in an impressive manner that marks him out as that rarest of animals, an in form and confident Cardiff City player.
Robinson’s very late goal from eight yards, where he showed a natural striker’s instinct (another very rare animal at Cardiff these days) by realising he had to move away from goal and not go towards the ball, was meaningless, but shouldn’t have been after an incident a few minutes earlier which rather sums this team up.
There were about three minutes left when Robinson slipped another sub, El Ghazi, through for a clear run in on goal, but it seemed to me watching the game alone at home that the Dutch international was beaten to a ball he should have been favourite for by home keeper Jamie Cumming.
I’d say El Ghazi should have been something like a 60/40 favourite at least to get to the ball first, but the Oxford player was more committed and the commentary team on the stream I was watching were saying the same after they’d seen a replay of the incident. An hour or two after the game as I type this, it seems most who saw the incident felt the same as me after reading reactions to it.
A draw would have been a travesty given how the game panned out after we conceded and part of me did not welcome the two late goals because they may be used to try to paper over the gaping cracks appearing in this car crash of a season.
It’s now nine games without a win for a squad that was telling us how much they were behind Omer Riza before the first of them at Luton. The Hatters were the first in I’d say six out of form teams we’ve played in this awful run and only at Stoke did we not allow our opponents to get a much needed three points with a comfortable win – that’s the sort of stat which means I can no longer believe we’re in a false position.
A couple of random thoughts to finish. What is it about the date 26 December that makes City teams’ legs turn to jelly? It’s now just two Boxing Day wins (Coventry in 2010 and Palace in 2012) in twenty four attempts!
Second, I often think there’s nothing worth supporting at the club these days, but that’s to ignore the under 18s who are having a good league season and the under 21s and women’s teams who both top their respective divisions. Therefore, it seems so modern day Cardiff City that a redesign of the club’s website means that you can no longer check these three teams’ upcoming ‘fixtures on there as it now only features the first team games which so many fans of the club are currently trying to find a reason to avoid.
Word is now filtering through from those who were at the game about how toxic the atmosphere became as the team capitulated with minimal resistance – maybe a corner has been turned regarding attitudes towards many of the team? For myself, although I accept there are dangers with bringing in a lot of youngsters to a clearly struggling team, after watching that today, I’m wondering whether regular places for the likes of Kpakio and Ashford and two or three other members of the under 21 team would leave us any weaker than we are currently – certainly, in terms of desire to play and fight for the club, we’d be stronger.